Professional Support and Supervision

Professional Consultation/Training

At WellSpirit, our specialized professional consultation services help allied care professionals deepen their understanding of their complex clients and enhance their capacity to provide them with the highest quality care. Our psychologists provide expertise in case conceptualization, neurodiversity, safety planning, and evidence-based treatments that helps professionals make informed care decisions and develop more effective intervention plans for their highest-risk clients. Our team is devoted to helping create a safe and supportive space for allied care professionals to debrief and process challenging cases, engage in collaborative treatment planning, increase clinical competency through didactic training, and ultimately reduce burn out.

We offer in-person, virtual, or hybrid consultations for professionals and organizations serving children and youth with complex needs, including child protection workers, foster parents, group homes, treatment foster homes, live-in treatment programs, day treatment programs, and other multidisciplinary teams. Our psychologists can provide single sessions or longer-term consultation services tailored to your needs to help promote excellence within your organization. A thorough case file review, with consent from the client and/or caregiver, may be completed depending on the scope and specific consultation questions.

Our professional consultation services can including:

• Clinical Consultation: Focused on biopsychosocial case formulation for children and youth with complex presentations.

• Crisis Intervention: Offering support for conducting risk assessment, safety planning, and stabilization of children and youth engaging in self-harm, suicidal behaviour, or other high-risk behaviours.

• Holistic Intervention Planning: Developing comprehensive plans that address the unique needs of children and youth with complex presentations from a holistic and culturally-sensitive perspective.

• Adaptations for Neurodiversity: Adapting intervention services and therapeutic environments to align with each client’s neurodevelopmental strengths and weaknesses.

• Trauma-Informed Care: Helping professionals recognize trauma-related behaviours and respond in ways that support emotional safety and healing.

• Psychoeducation: Targeted training for professionals on various topics related to supporting children and youth with complex neurodevelopment and mental health needs (e.g., FASD, ASD, complex trauma).

• DBT Program Development: Guidance on developing and operating a full-model DBT or DBT-informed program, including ongoing DBT consultation support, in various therapeutic settings (e.g., group home, live-in treatment).

• FASD Training and Professional Development: Focused on providing evidence-informed knowledge and skills to professionals so they can better supporting children, youth, and families with FASD.

Supervision

At WellSpirit, our senior psychologists provide clinical supervision in assessment, therapy, and consultation for graduate-level psychology trainees and psychologists in supervised practice. This is especially geared toward those planning to declare competency in clinical psychology or neuropsychology with children and adolescents. We offer competency-based supervision in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), ensuring that trainees develop the specific knowledge and skills necessary for effective practice.

Our approach emphasizes the following key components:

• Skill Identification: Supervisors and trainees collaboratively identify essential skills and knowledge that therapists must master, such as cognitive restructuring and behavioral chain analysis.

• Regular Evaluation: Supervisors assess the trainee’s proficiency through direct observation, case discussions, and feedback on recorded sessions.

• Formal Assessment Tools: Recorded sessions may be evaluated using standardized tools, like the Cognitive Therapy Rating Scale for Children and Adolescents (CTRS-CA), to measure therapeutic competencies across various aspects of CBT.

• Constructive Feedback: Supervisors provide constructive feedback to help trainees enhance their skills in targeted area and recognize their clinical strengths.

• Ongoing Didactic Training: Trainees receive focused training to deepen their knowledge in specific areas of clinical practice.

• Reflective Practice: Trainees are encouraged to reflect on their professional development journey and share feedback with their supervisors to optimize the supervisory relationship to meet their developmental needs.